I recently made a pilgrimage to some of the important places of my youth. I began at the former site of my elementary school gymnasium (now a park) where I vividly remember being inspired to catch and train a hawk after attending a school assembly featuring a Falconer and his trained bird of prey. I then moved on to the baseball field where I remember missing a crucial fly ball, and the soccer field where I scored a goal against our Canadian rivals. There was the local club where I taught tennis for several summers, and the housing development that used to be a swamp where I caught frogs and salamanders. I visited these places hoping to rekindle feelings from my past, but what I actually experienced was the sadness of senescent space. I wanted to resurrect my memories, but found them to be mummified corpses. I’m sure that the people who watched me conjuring up ghosts from my old haunts considered me a possessed intruder, but I was actually just a time traveller searching for home.
Augustine memorably said that, “Our hearts are restless, until they find rest in you.” I suspect that he was describing what inspired me to stroll down memory lane. But what exactly is restlessness? Ecclesiastes tells us that God placed eternity into the hearts of men (3: 11), which would certainly account for my arrhythmias of restlessness. But why would God place eternity into a limited mortal being? It might even seem like a cruel joke until you realize that without the need to look heavenward we would become hopelessly earthbound. C.S. Lewis said, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” My problem was that I kept looking at the earth expecting the heavens to tremble when I really needed to look heavenward and wait for an earthquake. The eternity set in our hearts will continue to make us restless in this finite world until we learn to sanctify our moments in eternity, then and only then will we find rest.
As you proceed on your journey, I would encourage you to invite God to walk with you so that every moment of your life becomes sacred, and when you feel the need to travel back in time as I did, you won’t be disappointed by the finite but rather overjoyed by eternity in disguise.
“We can only solve the problem of time through sanctification of time. To men alone time is elusive; to men with God time is eternity in disguise.” (Abraham Joshua Heschel)